


One-Track Mind

by Elenothar



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Charles just wants to sleep, Erik sings, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 13:40:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5250227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elenothar/pseuds/Elenothar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“It’s 3 AM and I can’t study because whoever’s in the room next to me is loudly singing along to every Fall Out Boy album in chronological order.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	One-Track Mind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betamax524](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betamax524/gifts).



> Hope you like it betamax524! :)
> 
> Beta credit to the lovely norcumi.

-

It’s the second week of term and Charles is about to lose his mind.

“It’s 3 AM and I can’t study because whoever’s in the room next to me is loudly singing along to every Fall Out Boy album in chronological order.”

A moment of silence met his announcement, then Raven sighed. “It’s three in the damn morning, Charles. You woke me up to complain about your _neighbor_?”

“It’s an emergency! It’s been going on for hours. _Hours_ , Raven. I mean he’s got a nice enough voice, but bloody hell does his taste in music leave something to be desired.”

Charles’d never quite figured out how Raven managed to radiate skepticism without even opening her mouth. He was entirely justified in his despair, he wasn’t blowing anything out of proportion. All right, so perhaps he was also _slightly_ over-caffeinated. But his point still stood.

“Wait a moment,” Raven said, in that tone of dawning suspicion that Charles learned to fear early on in his life. “How do you even know what he’s singing? And the chronological order of Fall Out Boy albums, come to think of it.”

Charles hesitated for a moment, as his blurry eyes tried and failed to focus on the screen in front of him. “Frustrated googling.”

“Are you sure you didn’t accidentally read his mind? You remember the last time you did that to someone with an ear worm and ended up singing ‘I’m blue’ for three hours?”

Charles pinched the bridge of his nose – only the thought of that debacle worsened the headache pounding behind his eyes. “How could I forget? And yes, I’m sure. I’ve been a lot more careful about… _everything_ here. Don’t need someone calling campus security in a panic because I slipped.”

His neighbor chose that moment to belt out _so go on, piiiick your pooooison_ at an astonishingly unlikely volume. Charles winced.

“Though I might just give Fall Out Boy guy some Mozart to occupy him if he keeps this up any longer,” he grumbled, closing the word document he’d (not) been working on. It was late, he was tired, his concentration was shot thanks to the yodeling next door, and he was calling it quits.

“Even I heard that,” Raven commented, sounding unreasonably impressed. “Guy’s got some voice.”

“Yes, well, I wish he’d take his voice elsewhere,” Charles snapped. Which made him feel even worse because taking his frustration out on Raven was unfair and unhelpful and he _had_ woken her up just to whine. “Sorry, love. I didn’t mean to snap.”

“It’s all right,” Raven returned, uncommonly forgiving – probably because she’d realized just how close to the end of his tether Charles really was. “Just… take care of yourself, okay? And try ear plugs.”

That at last wrung a laugh out of him. “I’ll do my best.”

“And if all else fails, you can always kick his ass.”

-

And that probably would’ve been it – Fall Out Boy guy didn’t sing anything else, save for a couple isolated songs here and there (and Charles wasn’t disappointed at all, no he wasn’t, he was catching up on work and sleep dammit), were it not for the fact that college students were walking, talking fire-hazards and incompetent in the kitchen to boot.

Turned out being evicted from your building in the middle of the night in November wasn’t the most comfortable of experiences. Charles was huddling in a circle with Hank, Moira and two other guys he didn’t recognize. They were both mutants, judging by the cloud of sulfur they’d arrived in and the fact that one of them was letting a coin wander through his fingers absentmindedly.

“If this was Cassidy smoking weed in his room _again_ ,” the red-skinned teleporter muttered, the barest hint of a Russian accent pricking Charles’ interest.

“No, I think it was coming out of the second floor kitchen,” the other guy replied and Charles’ mind short-circuited.

“You’re Fall Out Boy guy!” he blurted, before his brain’s ABORT ABORT signals could reach his mouth.

Everyone turned to stare at him, and Charles was suddenly painfully aware that he was standing on a dirty, cold sidewalk in his dressing gown, without shoes and with what was probably fairly impressive bed-head.

Fall Out Boy guy raised an eyebrow. “I’m what?”

His voice really was rather nice – smooth with just a hint of roughness – especially when he wasn’t singing some awful emo pop song. His looks were also really nice, but Charles was trying very hard not to notice that.

“Oh, er.” Charles could _feel_ himself blushing. Dammit. Life really wasn’t fair. “You were somewhat… spirited in your rendition the other day.”

Fall Out Boy guy grinned and shrugged. “It helps me think. And my name is Erik.”

He stuck out his hand.

“Charles,” Charles returned, wondering whether he was the only one who felt the particular spark that raced up his hand. “So why Fall Out Boy?”

“My mother’s fault,” Erik replied easily, no sign of embarrassment anywhere to be found on his face or anywhere in the low-level thoughts Charles couldn't help but pick up. “I was going through a bit of a rough patch, and she got me their first album. Things just went on from there.”

That didn’t particularly satisfy Charles’ curiosity – who decided to give their son Fall Out Boy in an attempt to get him through hard times anyway? – but one of the college wardens took this moment to loudly announce that they could get back into the building.

In the ensuing rush to get through the doors, he lost sight of Erik and when he finally reached his room, the door next to his was firmly shut.

He sighed with regret for a lost moment, then turned his key in the lock. Well, at least he didn’t have to call his neighbor Fall Out Boy guy anymore.

-

On the upside, Charles had far less in the way of compunctions about calling his neighbor out on his racket now that he knew his name. On the downside, there was _still_ racket. It wasn’t like he minded the occasional song, but the next time Erik started belting out irritatingly familiar songs for longer than half an hour, Charles huffed and went with the only viable option –

He banged on the wall adjoining their rooms, and before he could stop to think about what he was doing and sink into a pit of self-consciousness, shouted, “For fuck’s sake, Erik, at least switch up your repertoire a little bit! Don’t you know any good songs?”

Charles awarded himself a gold star when the singing did indeed cut off mid-phrase. A short period of silence followed, which he spent all but pressed against the wall hoping to hear Erik’s reaction. At least his telepathy only picked up amusement, so Erik probably wasn’t about to start shouting back.

Then –

_IS THIS THE REAL LIFE? IS THIS JUST FANTASY?_

The volume was, if possible, even louder and Charles flinched away from the wall. Despite himself, his lips curled at the corners. So there _was_ some taste hidden beneath all the Fall Out Boy lyrics.

_CAUGHT IN A LANDSLIDE, NO ESCAPE FROM REALITY._

Charles sunk back onto his bed, all work forgotten by this new development. _Hey Jude_ followed _Bohemian Rhapsody_ , and once Erik had belted his way through 144 nananas – the shorter version, Charles noted with some amusement – he almost seamlessly segued into _Sympathy for the Devil_.

Classic rock. Now that Charles could get behind.

The next day, when he was sure Erik was out, he snuck a piece of paper under his door that simply read:

 _Thank you – my ears appreciate the variety_.

When he returned from his Introduction to Genetics course later that day, he found a scrap of paper on his own floor, small and cramped handwriting announcing

_Always_

-

A lecturer hadn’t turned up for Charles’ 9 am and he returned to his room in a black mood. He’d managed about four hours of sleep, which wasn’t enough by a long shot – he couldn’t believe he’d dragged himself out of bed to go to a lecture that wasn’t even taking place.

He glumly stared at the half-filled cup of tea he’d forgotten yesterday. Raven had once accused him of always having too much energy, but right now he felt entirely sucked dry.

Before he could think better of it, he scrawled

_Had a shitty day - My Guitar Gently Weeps?_

and deposited the paper underneath Erik’s door. It only took him a couple of minutes to start feeling absolutely ridiculous about the whole thing. He’d talked to Erik _once_ for heaven’s sake – what was he doing asking him for cheer-me-up songs? And the worst thing was, he couldn’t even undo the whole thing. The incriminating piece of paper was lost in Erik’s room and he had no way of getting it back, short of kicking the door in, which quite frankly would make him look like even more of a nutter.

The half hour that followed was perfectly miserable. Even pulling out his favorite Pratchett novel wasn’t enough to keep him distracted as he waited for Erik’s unique mental signature to ping his telepathy.

Of course, once he did feel Erik coming down the hallway the whole thing went from miserable to entirely panic-inducing because _now Erik was going to find the paper_. He jumped at the muffled _thud_ of Erik’s door falling shut.

Five tense minutes passed. Resisting the urge to bury his head in the pillow and pretend the world didn’t exist, Charles rose to turn on his computer. Might as well attempt to get some work done to get some use out of this train-wreck of a day.

The screen had just prompted him to input his password when Erik started to sing.

_I look at you all see the love there that’s sleeping._

Charles sat stock still, afraid to make any noise and miss just a moment of this. Erik’s voice, usually so loud when singing, crooned gently, just barely loud enough to hear through the wall and there was emotion there, a wistfulness that Charles had never heard from Erik before.

He closed his eyes and let the sound wash over him.

-

The morning after his last supervision of the term, Charles opened sleepy eyes to his bedside clock proclaiming 7am in cheerful red lettering and wondered what in the blazes had woken him up so early.

It only took a moment for his brain to catch up with his ears. His ears were giving him this:

_And I love the way you hurt me, it’s irresistible, yeah._

Charles frowned, horrible suspicion confirmed when he rifled through his brand new mental catalog of Fall Out Boy songs and found _Irresistible_. Balls. Erik was back to that band again, and at an inhumanely early hour of the day no less.

Groaning, Charles buried his head back into his pillow, wishing – not for the first time – that he could use a telepathic sleep-suggestion on himself.

The next day he was allowed to sleep in till his 10 am lecture and consequently in a much better mood when he made his way back to his room for lunch – even if Erik was singing what sounded tragically like _another_ Fall Out Boy song. By now lyric recognition had largely automated itself in his brain and spat out _Alone Together_ before he’d even progressed beyond the reflexive faint stab of annoyance.

On the third day – _America’s Suitehearts_ – Charles realized that the song titles weren’t a coincidence. Or maybe he’d just reached new levels of paranoia where his neighbor’s singing habits were concerned, that was a possibility too.

By the time Erik’d graduated to _My Heart is the Worst Kind of Weapon_ on the fourth day, Charles was beginning to suspect he was supposed to be getting some kind of hint here.

The next day Erik had only gotten halfway through _It’s Not A Side Effect of the Cocaine, I Am Thinking It Must Be Love_ when Charles knocked on his door. Forcefully.

The singing cut off, and a moment later Erik was opening the door, grin showing most of his teeth. Turned out that there _was_ an easy way to shut him up.

Charles mentally added _good kisser_ to his list. It now read:

  1.        Singing talent
  2.        Unfairly handsome
  3.        Mutant
  4.        Volume control issues
  5.        No respect for neighborly work-hours
  6.        Good kisser



He supposed he could live with items 4 and 5, if that meant he got to take advantage of 2 and 6. Even if Erik’s taste in music was shit.

 


End file.
